When flash floods hit the sleepy tourist village of Boscastle on the North Cornwall coast in August 2004, it made headline news around Europe.
A total of 200mm of rain fell in just five hours. The sudden deluge caused two nearby rivers to burst their banks and a torrent of water to sweep through the village’s main street.
The Flood Defence Scheme was undertaken by the Environment Agency in partnership with Halcrow (lead designer), Carillion Civil Engineering (main contractor) and EC Harris (cost consultant). The Scheme aims to reduce the frequency and consequences of flooding from the River Valency and thereby make Boscastle, a safer place.
The flood defence system works with the natural processes of the river and integrates with the sustainable regeneration of the village. The result has been the creation of a flood risk management scheme providing a 1 in 75 year standard of defence, the best possible at this location.
The project enabled innovative and technically complex features to be incorporated into traditional flood defence works. The result has been to improve the standard of protection to the village and ensure a sensitive development within a conservation area emphasising technical merit and design excellence.
The scheme forms a key aspect of the Boscastle Regeneration Programme and the project has been described by the Environment Agency as “a model of quality design built to the highest technical and environmental standards”. The partnership approach which was undertaken has minimised the impacts of construction and maximised environmental enhancement in a truly sustainable way.
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Video
Halcrow celebrated a triple project win at the 2009 Waterways Renaissance Awards run by The Waterways Trust and British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA). The awards recognise best practice in sustainable waterway regeneration and development throughout the UK.
In the video Peter Soulsby (MP for Leicester South), Roland Grzybek (Halcrow) and Richard Cox (Environment Agency) talk about the projects and Halcrow's success at the awards.